For well over sixty years, wheels for automotive passenger vehicles (which includes light trucks as well as passenger cars) adapted for button-hook mounting of pneumatic tires thereon have been fabricated from sheet metal, usually steel, to provide a rolled one-piece rim with a drop-center well to which is affixed a disc (also termed "body" or "spider") adapted for mounting the wheel to the hub or other wheel mounting part of the vehicle. Usually the rim is made with both inboard and outboard bead seats and associated tire bead retaining flanges, and the disc is secured to the base of the drop-center well of the rim. Such wheels are well suited for use with tubeless tires and are in extensive use today as so-called "base wheels" or "plain-Jane" wheels. Their lack of aesthetically pleasing appearance is often compensated for by the provision of removably attached decorative hub caps, wheel covers and/or trim rings, as is well known in the art.
Such wheels may also be aesthetically enhanced if used as a "backbone" of composite plastic and steel styled wheels such as those extensively commercialized and sold under the trademark "POLYCAST" by the assignee of applicants herein, Motor Wheel Corporation, Lansing, Mich. Such wheels have a decorative plastic body permanently affixed to the outboard (also termed "street-side" or "curb-side") of the steel "backbone" as set forth in more detail, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,963,083 and the patents cited therein.
Another passenger car wheel development commercially employed to enhance the appearance of steel wheels, initiated in the early 1960's by applicants' assignee herein, Motor Wheel Corporation, is the so-called "styled" steel wheel wherein the disc is progressively formed utilizing progressive deep-draw die transfer press forming operations to impart a decorative, highly contoured configuration to the disc. For the most part, such styled wheels comprise a conventional disc and rim assembly of the aforementioned "base wheel" type wherein the disc is affixed to the drop-center base of a full rim section (i.e., dual beads and associated dual tire-retaining flanges). Example of such styled steel wheel constructions are shown in U.S. Pat. No. Des. 197,840 and U.S. Pat. No. Des. 199,394.
Another effort to enhance the appearance of automotive wheels has been the development of aluminum styled wheels made by such processes as sand casting, permanent die casting, forging, etc., and finished by machining. Such wheels may have the outboard tire bead seat and retaining flange joined integrally with the disc, to impart a so-called "full-face look" and this portion in turn joined with the remainder of the rim inboard half in a two-piece or one-piece wheel assembly as exemplified by the Nobach U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,311. Although such aluminum full-face styled wheels have gained increased popularity in the last decade, they represent a relatively costly solution to the problem of enhancing wheel styling since they typically exceed the factory cost of the plain-Jane wheels by about three to five times.
A more recent passenger vehicle wheel development, initiated in the 1980's by applicants assignee herein, Motor Wheel Corporation, is the so-called "full-face" sheet metal (e.g. steel) wheel, wherein the disc extends generally radially outwardly around its outer periphery to also form the outboard tire bead retaining flange to achieve the full-face appearance. A modified dual bead seat-single bead-retaining-flange rim is formed adjacent its outboard edge to provide the outboard bead seat, and the rim free edge is formed to provide a radially in-turned flange which is welded to the inboard face of the full-face disc part. A commercially successful example of such a full-face wheel is that disclosed and claimed in Overbeck et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,482, also assigned to the assignee herein. Such sheet metal full-face wheels enable the wheel designer to provide a more unique and distinct full-face styling appearance to the outboard face of the wheel at lower cost than cast or forged aluminum wheels while also obviating the need for attaching ornamental wheel covers and their attendant problems and cost.
These full-face sheet metal wheels of the Overbeck et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,482 patent also meet the increased off-set requirement of front wheel drive systems while also satisfying such other demanding parameters as a strong, reliable air-tight circumferential weld joint and a two-piece wheel assembly capable of meeting severe fatigue life specifications required on current O.E.M. automotive vehicle wheels. Many millions of such wheels have been made and sold and are currently in use on automotive passenger vehicles (both passenger cars and light trucks) of both U.S. and foreign manufacture.
However, one problem remaining with such full-face sheet metal wheel constructions arises from the inherent nature of the disc and rim construction wherein the disc provides the outboard tire-bead-retaining flange. This imparts a fixed (non-variable) wheel off-set for any particular full-face wheel part design. By contrast, a "plain-Jane" or "base wheel construction", because of the telescopic-type press-fit and welded attachment of the peripheral disc flange to the drop-center well of the dual bead rim, permits off-set specifications for a given wheel part to be varied relatively easily without changing the other parameters of the given wheel design. However, hitherto, if a given full-face sheet metal wheel design were desired to be retained unchanged, and yet adapted to fit different models of a vehicle having differing wheel off-set requirements, the design of the disc/outboard rim flange part of the wheel had to be reconfigured. This in turn entailed a complete re-tooling of the progressive die forming equipment utilized in the transfer press to make this part, thereby resulting in high tooling change costs and long lead times involved in the manufacture of such modified tooling as well as installation and try-out of the same. This was true even though the wheel disc/outboard rim flange part was not to be noticably changed in its outboard appearance from the styling standpoint because the O.E.M. customer desired a full-face wheel having the same style or appearance for a range of similar vehicle models having differing wheel off-set requirements.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved full-face vehicle wheel construction, and improved method and improved apparatus for making the same from sheet metal, which overcome the aforementioned problems in an economical and reliable manner.